The business of a contact center is to provide rapid and efficient interaction between agents and customers, or prospective customers, using various interaction methods and media, including phone, fax, e-mail and messaging. A manager in a contact center typically uses force management software (FMS) to produce a schedule that includes agents assigned to work activities for specific time periods. During the workday, the FMS produces staffing statistics. The manager uses staffing statistics to adjust the number of agents assigned to particular activities when the contact center performance is either above or below contact center goals (e.g., a desired service level.) If performance exceeds the goals, the manager can reduce the number of agents. If performance does not meet goals, the manager can add more agents to the schedule.
Skills-based routing attempts to find the best available match between the needs of the customer and the various proficiencies or skills of available agents. Providing staffing statistics in a skills-based environment is difficult. One problem is providing an accurate count of agents. A multi-skill agent could be counted against more than one (skill) queue. A conventional FMS simply counts an agent with multiple skills against all queues, resulting in an miscount. Furthermore, a conventional FMS reports one combined count, rather than a count for each skill-related queue.